


If I'm Lucky, Mr. Talent Will Rub His Tentacles On My Art

by Coffin Liqueur (HP_Lovecats)



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Present Tense, Slice of Life, Ultimate Talent Development Plan (Dangan Ronpa), Vaguely Implied One-Sided Kamukura Izuru/Komaeda Nagito
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:54:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23989945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HP_Lovecats/pseuds/Coffin%20Liqueur
Summary: On hearing that Izuru would be attending and critiquing one of Angie's art exhibitions, well... looks like Nagito felt the urge to use it as an opportunity to get a "senpai noticed me" moment in...
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	If I'm Lucky, Mr. Talent Will Rub His Tentacles On My Art

“Nagito,” Izuru says flat and plain.

Nagito smiles.

Izuru’s eyes seem to dull a moment before they shift to look somewhere off to the side, and Nagito isn’t even offended. Heck, something in him feels as if it’s brightening, because…

...he laughs, softly.

“Surprised to see me here?” He continues to beam and gently laugh, keeping voice and tone both gentle and sunny and airy. “I don’t blame you. I’ve probably never seemed like an artsy guy, have I? But… I mean, of course I know you wouldn’t have to know what this is like, but I guess sometimes, it just feels like a nice change in pace, to try something new that you’re not that talented in… not that someone like me has a choice…”

_ Surprised  _ is the key point in why he is happy, here.

Izuru is seldom surprised.

That, Nagito imagines, is why he seems upset.

And from this moment, he can derive some pride. He has succeeded in having… a special sort of impact on Izuru.

_ He is not worthy! _

He lets his head fall tilted, ever-so-slightly. His smile gently melting a bit, almost thankfully, as Izuru continues to not look at him.

And Angie titters, almost obliviously. “We have been  _ waiting  _ for you, Izuru!” comes her voice, nice and merry, from somewhere on Nagito’s right. “Atua has, as always, spoken to me clearly in the creations which you are coming to see today… and now, it is time to see if His voice reaches you, too! And has reached Nagito - he came to me with the desire to let Atua into his heart, after all, and even though I am His prophet, I know that for many people not of my island, learning to let His hand guide them is a process…!”

Izuru’s eyes snap onto Nagito, quite suddenly.

And Nagito is suddenly happily sheepish, lifting his hands, laughing with a wincing kind of softness.

“...You don’t think I went to make art with Angie out of any kind of ulterior motives, right…?”

He absolutely did. He knows Izuru knows it, too.

With the knowledge that neither of them is going to say it, though, he feels it best to keep cards tucked up to his chest. Arbitrarily keep playing some sort of game neither of them has lost yet.

“I heard about her exhibition, yeah… but really. It just made me think that it’d be a good idea to go to her and ask her to give me a lesson - so that I might be able to connect better with a talent like hers, and understand how it works, even if I’ll never have it.”

He suspects that the painting behind him is, in fact, immaculate.

Not to toot his own horn, of course - god knows he’s not inclined to that - but because he knows by his own awareness of general aesthetic standards that it probably leans more toward being a nice-looking painting than a crappy one. Therefore, he imagines that it’s a product of one of his  _ getting-very-lucky _ moments.

As always, nothing to do with talent.

Izuru averts his eyes again, and for a moment, Nagito wonders if he bought it anyway, his smile slipping to a neutral line, brow lifting over curiously-open eyes.

He watches as Izuru turns to face Angie. “Before anything else, show me yours,” he says.

Ah, if Miu were here.

Angie bobs, tucks her hands behind her back, and springs up, pulling something out in front of her with a flourish. “Ta-daaaaaaaaa!” she laughs, eyes shut by her smile, standing poised-to-bounce all but on her toes.

Izuru regards her painting.

Then the one Nagito holds framed in his hands; Nagito beams and cocks his head in rather a show of sheepish joy.

Izuru turns to Angie again. “Obviously, it’s exceedingly technically proficient,” he says. His eyes drop from her face to her painting, and he steps forward, extending a just-bent finger, short of touching the canvas. “You’ve chosen the optimal tones of, likewise, the optimal base hues to maximize the visual impact of contrast between the light and shadows in the scene. The composition is balanced. You’ve paid sufficient attention to detail that the piece is visually complex and its lack of realism is clearly intentional. You are going to claim that your innate sense for these aspects of a piece of art is, in fact, you channeling the vision of your god… but in truth, this is the nature of talent.”

Angie hums with giggles, and pulls her painting in a controlled swinging motion up beside her face. She poses with it, eyes still shut in gleeful contentment. “...Of  _ course  _ my talent comes from Atua...!” Her inflection dances and turns and curls like a ribbon in the wind. “I am truly blessed to be able to make so many pretty things because He loves me!”

Izuru then looks at Nagito’s painting.

Not Nagito.

His painting.

Nagito’s face fully brightens and he holds it up a notch higher, fingers tightening.

“By contrast, you, Nagito, have managed a photorealistic painting of the Academy.”

Nagito laughs, gently. “From memory,” he says. He painted the front - the view of it looming up above them that every student saw approaching it on their first day as an Ultimate.

“You don’t have a photographic memory,” Izuru says, cold-eyed, as a statement of assumed fact; not a testing question.

Nagito nods. “That’s right.”

“You guessed which precise combinations of colors matched those of the materials the building is made of.”

Another sheepish laugh. “Yeah… All guesswork!”

“You guessed how you should angle the lines to portray accurate perspective and scale.”

“I didn’t even use a ruler.” And, realizing it may sound like a boast, Nagito let his eyes drop - smile maintained, speaking softer, staring into the abyss that was the space in front of his shoes, catching Izuru’s shadow, blue on the concrete. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t even sketch…”

“Atua truly  _ was  _ speaking to Nagito,” Angie coos, syllables long. “And so clearly, too, even though he’s a first timer!”

Izuru is silent.

And, curiously, Nagito looks back up to see his face.

As usual, it’s unimpressed.

He’s looking passively aside with…  _ some  _ thought.

Nagito hears Angie’s clothes flap as she bounces next to him. “Is  _ this  _ why you’re the Ultimate Lucky Student of your class, Nagito?”

He turns his head to look at her to find that she has taken a step toward him and leaned, clutching her painting just below the level of her grinning mouth, peering up at him. Playfully.

He pauses for a moment, brow lifted in mild surprise…

...before he strafes a half-step back, running his hand through his hair, the lift turning into an awkward knit and a soft laugh.

His eyes flick from her to Izuru to her to Izuru again. He tugs his smile up for a single pulsed moment in one corner, fingers still absently twisting knots of his hair.

“...Well, there’s a saying about monkeys and typewriters, right…?” he remarks, dryly.

Izuru’s head lowers the smallest amount in the smallest,  _ smallest  _ nod. “That  _ does  _ seem to be the nature of half of your talent, yes.”

Nagito knows he doesn’t mean it cruelly. Izuru  _ tells it like it is. _ That’s a good thing. Just another thing to  _ admire  _ about him.  _ Nothing  _ about him not to respect.

Meanwhile, here’s Angie, who, he swears, through the Angie-speak is insinuating it was a flash of inspiration.  _ Divine  _ inspiration, albeit…!

...Ha ha…

_...Ohh, he is not worthy…! _

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to use the title, guys.


End file.
